“There would be a mainstreaming of the development of the bioeconomy over the next year, and its embedding in other policies. Bioeconomy can reach parts of society and economy that other policies can’t reach”. To say this was John Bell, Director for Bioeconomy at DG Research and Innovation, at the ThinkForest seminar which took place in Brussels last 7 November.
Yesterday in Brussels was the Bioeconomy Policy day, a day dedicated not only to announce the outcomes of the review on the bioeconomy strategy presented in a Staff Working Document, but also to discuss how to move the bioeconomy forward. The EU Bioeconomy Stakeholders Panel launched the European Bioeconomy Manifesto to set out how the continent plans to grow this mult-trillion euro industry.
“Growing the Irish Forest Bioeconomy”. This is the title of a report launched by the minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Andrew Doyle T.D. The report, produced by the Council for Forest Research and Development (COFORD), on the contribution and potential of the forest sector in the emerging Irish Bioeconomy has been submitted to the Department of An Taoiseach (taoiseach means leader and is the prime minister of Ireland). This is part of the on-going process to develop a Government Policy Statement on the Irish Bioeconomy.
Titan Hemp, a leading provider of hemp commodities and extracts based in Seattle (USA), has formed a joint venture with Green Growers Technology Alliance (GGTA) to create a new company, Titan BioPlastics, a manufacturing and development entity focused on creating plant-based composites and products for a wide variety of manufacturing applications, including packaging, nanotechnology, bio-polymers, construction, and bioplastics.
There is a new Brazilian-Danish partnership in the world bioeconomy. Braskem, the Americas’ leading producer of thermoplastic resins, and Danish-based Haldor Topsoe, a world leader in catalysts and surface science, have signed a technological cooperation agreement to develop a pioneering route to produce monoethylene glycol (MEG) from sugar. The agreement calls for the construction of a demonstration plant in Denmark, with operation slated to begin in 2019.
The output of China’s biological industry is expected to reach 10 trillion yuan (1.5 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022. The compound annual growth rate of the bio-industry in China has been over 15 percent since 2011, according to a white paper on the industry jointly released by Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology and Chengdu Library and Information Center, both affiliated with Chinese Academy of Sciences.
We receive and publish with pleasure this contribution sent by professor Olli Dahl (Aalto University, Finland), who presents a list of all the main investments and their products in Finnish bioeconomy, and considers whether the country’s forest resources can cope with so much new potential capacity in the forest industry sector.
ExxonMobil and Renewable Energy Group (REG) have demonstrated the ability to convert sugars from a variety of non-edible biomass sources into biodiesel by utilizing REG’s patented fermentation technology
Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, will invest in a new full-scale commercial plant for the production of cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues using its sunliquid® technology. The new plant, with an annual production capacity of 50.000 tons, will be built in the southwestern part of Romania. The facility will be a flagship site, confirming competitiveness and sustainability of the sunliquid® technology at commercial scale thus supporting Clariant’s sunliquid® licensing business strategy.
“The Ipo (Initial public offering, editor’s note) of Versalis is not yet in Eni’s plans”, Massimo Mondazzi, CFO of the Italian oil giant, said last Friday during a conference call with analysts answering the question about the chemical quotation hypothesis. “We want to maintain and strengthen Versalis, there are no Ipo projects. The option is not in the plans,” he said.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 